Rolla, Missouri

I lived in Rolla for the 4 years I went to Missouri School of Science and Technology, back then it was just UMR but they felt they had to get fancy with the name to compete with all the private universities. Anyhow, don’t get me wrong, Rolla has some racist past happenings but I lived there in the early 2000’s and if I ever experienced racism, I couldn’t tell by how i was treated and I made a few late night trips to the 24 hour Walmart. I mostly stuck to campus, campus events and businesses off the main road, fast food places, the local car rental places and such. The one event I remember actually happened on campus when a black female student was verbally and to a small degree, physically assaulted by three white guys hurling racial slurs. In a town like Rolla, there will be that possibility of running into an ignorant white person or two, but in 2026, Rolla just voted in a black mayor, so of all the folks that voted in Rolla, a majority of them chose a black man to run the city.